Eideard

Phthalates are important components of many consumer products, including toys, cleaning materials, plastics, and personal care items. Studies to date on phthalates have been inconsistent, with some linking exposure to these chemicals to hormone disruptions, birth defects, asthma, and reproductive problems, while others have found no significant association between exposure and adverse effects.

A new report by Korean scientists…found a significant positive association between phthalate exposure and ADHD, meaning that the higher the concentration of phthalate metabolites in the urine, the worse the ADHD symptoms and/or test scores.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the Summary of their 2005 Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, state that “very limited scientific information is available on potential human health effects of phthalates at levels” found in the U.S. population. Although this study was performed in a Korean population, their levels of exposure are likely comparable to a U.S. population.

The current findings do not prove that phthalate exposure caused ADHD symptoms. However, these initial findings provide a rational basis for further research on this association.

Yup. The math works. Now, lets see if the chemistry and biology does.

Police search wheat field looking for subversive weevils
Daylife/Getty Images

Police have been accused of setting a “dangerous precedent” when they confiscated hundreds of items of property – including children’s crayons, a clown’s outfit and a pensioner’s walking stick – from people attending an environmental protest camp at Kingsnorth power station.

A list of more than 2,000 possessions taken from protesters, who were repeatedly searched going to and from the camp last August, has been obtained through a freedom of information request by Liberal Democrat justice spokesman David Howarth.

It shows that officers took packets of balloon, tents, a clown’s outfit, camping equipment, cycle helmets and bike locks, plastic buckets, bin bags, blankets, soap, banners and leaflets, books, party poppers and nail clippers. A toy plastic gun, life-jackets, inflatable dinghies, paddles and foot pumps were also confiscated, police say, to stop protesters taking to the river around the Hoo peninsula in Kent. Much of the property has yet to be returned…

Kent police were embarrassed over the event last year when, after ministers had justified what they called the “proportionate” £5.9m cost of the security operation by pointing out that 70 officers had been injured at the event, they then had to admit that the injuries reported by officers included heat exhaustion, toothache, insect bites and headaches.

“The police admit that almost all the items seized had a legitimate purpose. The idea that it is appropriate to seize ordinary people’s property on the off-chance that it might be used to commit a crime is a dangerous precedent.

“Almost anything can be invested with sinister intent with enough imagination. I even heard of one case where police confiscated a camper’s soap on the basis that it could be used to make them slippery and evade capture by police. This is simply farcical.”

Some of my friends on the Vegetarian Left may have enough hair to intimidate the average school-leaver-copper. That neither justifies preemptive theft nor abuse based on 19th-Century ideology. Demonstrators or crowd-minders.